The invisible hand of the free market

The dirty and not-so-secret-anymore truth when it comes to nurse practitioners is that the sky is falling...fast. There is no shortage of posts from NPs sounding the alarm about job saturation in various regions of the United States. With the proliferation of 100% online MSN and FNP diploma mills slapping white coats onto warm bodies, what else would anyone expect? Thankfully, it looks like insurance companies are starting to wise up - not only are there way too many NPs running around, there are way too many unqualified NPs running around. Hopefully, health insurance companies and medical malpractice underwriters will start requiring as a prerequisite for credentialing that nurse practitioners not only have a minimum amount of experience from a reputable institution, but that they also be directly supervised by a physician. After all, it's a lot cheaper to hire a competent physician who knows what he/she is doing than trying to cheap out with a questionable midlevel hire and have to deal with the costs and liability associated with bad patient outcomes and unnecessary testing.